On Jul 29, 2013, at 3:34 PM, Simo Sorce <s...@redhat.com> wrote:

> 
> btrfs consumes space on each write to the same block.
> 
> If you have a 10GB file system with a 5GB, existing log file and overwrite it 
> twice in place, you will run out of space.

It's a sufficiently confusing example, that I almost wish df (the typical 
user-space tool to learn of free space) would lie for btrfs volumes by 
subtracting 15% in the report. The raid1/10 case is even more confusing, but 
only because users now expect to be lied to that they have 1/2 the storage 
space compared to what they purchased. Btrfs is telling the whole truth about 
the total available storage and that data is taking twice the allocation.

So again it's managing user expectations. Maybe df should persist in lying 
somehow (although difficult with mixed raid levels in a single volume), and the 
more lower level stat and btrfs tools should tell the deeper story?


> There is no magic pony here for you - if you configure thin, you mean to use 
> it to lie to the users and their file systems for a valid reason.

And not new. Qcow has allowed the situation for some time.

A legitimate concern is how the file system behaves when its virtual storage 
suddenly runs out of backing storage space; that it can fail semi-gracefully 
(i.e. without file system corruption, even if there would be data loss).


Chris Murphy
-- 
devel mailing list
devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct

Reply via email to